The Dallas daily herald. [volume] (Dallas, Tex.) 1873-1887, 1887-05-13
A PIONEER GHOST.

with Roswell (Rolla, as his boyhood
name was) to restore an early pio-
neer-sugar camp. A considerable bit
OF the primitive wood had been pre-
served, quite enough to hide the boil
ing works. The kettles were hung by
beech trummels, on a lug polc-there
were the store, trough, the sap yoke
and buckets, the small, rather too
neat cabin. Right about headquar-
tiers were the AK made sap troughs-all
as in the primitive times.
The day-the last OF two or three
successive sun bright days, indicating
the wane OF the sugar season, and the
kindling OF the year-had been all
that single day could well be.
1t was past, the girls were gone, and
night was making its approach seen
and felt in the ancient wood, helping
the cherished illusions-they years turn
ed back, the grand forest restored, the
silent group in ths deepening twilight
we're boys again, in the depth OF the
woods The gir,5 were gone. It had
been great day for them, old girls,
yet for the day, girls. They have ram
bed a little heayy-footed and slow,
through the woods, where the earlier
flowers of the spring began to show
themselves-the liverworts, blood
roots, the spray-like ground nuts, and
many budded spring beauty. In the
favored place few real leeks stabbed
up. There had been a butterfly
seen Topping among the trees, lighting
on the sap sprouts, and many honey
bees, robins and blue birds were there,
chickadees, blue Jays and the nut
hatch-winter residents these last; all
these had been noted-talked over
and the girls were gone. Ann. her
younger sister Helen, and one OF the
Dams went with them. So Elizabeth
and Minerva went with Elvira for the
night. Elderly girls-all called such
for the time.
The boys, Roosevelt, Monroe, anoth.
or Dan, Capt. John, OF the hundred
day company, William and Theo-
these last came down from Michigan;
stood rather pensively about the rude
furnace and boiling copper kettles,
CONVEX sing in subdued voices, in the
perceptible twilight under the print
tive trees. The fire was growing con-
spicuous, and its sparks visible. A
colony OF frogs from the swale below
were making themselves heard, among
which were the piercing notes OF a lew
hylodes, which usually precede the
croakers. 1--WE shan make any more
good sugar" said Monroe, in his chest
tones.
'These are the first OF them" said
Dan. "They will be frozen up three
times. No good sugar after the Sec
ond is the old rule. e
Then followed some discussion OF
the relations OF frogs to the condi-
tions favorable to sugar making. The
conclusion was that they only indi-
Gated the advance OF the season.
There was an old time incident OF
the neiphborhood, which though now
forgotten, occurred since the Johnson
boys went to Michigan, and which X.
had promised to tell them OF alter the
girls left, and they now claimed a per-
tormance.
"You know can't tell a story, and
this is not story and has no come
out OF any sort" was his hesitating
preliminary. He was no great talker
at the best. "That is the rule now"
said Dan, who remained. "A man be-
gins anywhere in the current OF every
day life, takes a commonplace person
or two and sticks to them for n year
or so, tells usually what they don do
and the reason or no reason why, and
drops them. As yours is all about
ghost"
"a ghost that is not a ghost" put
N the proposed narrator.
"Who haunted an old barn thirty
BY forty
"Or didn't" interiected Monroe.
"Or didn't" accepted Dan, lit will
run in the line OF the present school
exactly"
There was a pause of a moment.